Hey everyone, just wanted to check in and see if anyone’s found a solution?

I find meditation (mindfulness) helps deal with the emotional pain, but it doesn’t “take it away” – i.e. the issues are still there, it just doesn’t hurt as much. In my experience when I felt like a good person, I was hopeful – happy – I actually felt good. Now, I have TONS of external (and internal) issues and frankly not much hope that it will get better. I feel trapped.

I think a lot of our feelings – or at least mine – stems from being in extreme pain due to personal circumstances and then there seems like no hope of being able to escape it.

I have found hope ( and obviously a pain-free life) makes all the difference.

The question is when everything – life at the time – is painful, and there seems like no hope, how do you continue to be a good person – to feel like a good person? It’s the best goal you can have – to be a good person.

I think the pain, the hopelessness, the other things, numb us. I think the word I was looking for was “inspired”. I was inspired to be a great person. Now, I’m beat up by life and, simply put, it feels like I can’t feel anything good. Any time I feel good even for a second, some evil comes and ruins it. I’m trying to do the right thing – but I feel impulsive. I feel like I need to avoid the pain. I think it’s the constant fight-or-flight reaction.

Even if I told you what the cause of your pain was – I said “[this] is the cause of your pain” – if you can’t fix it what good would it do knowing? The goal is to feel relaxed and inspired, but it’s completely natural to feel awful in an awful situation. But that doesn’t help – we want to feel good – feel and act like good people no matter the situation.

Let me give you an extreme example. Kidnapping victims. Someone who has been taken hostage and held for days – weeks – isn’t going to have bubbly feelings inside. They’re going to feel threatened, the FoF response is going to kick in, and since they can’t easily escape their situation (running will get them shot), they freeze or fawn. They may feel on edge, or numb, or anything else. It’s not unexpected that they won’t feel inspired. For me, if I were in that situation – which of course I would never wish that on myself or anyone else – I woudn’t want the threat over my head to affect how I behave. I want to be in control. I would of course be terrified, but I don’t want my circumstances to dictate my behaviour, I want to recognize my circumstances, determine what the right thing to do is, and do it. So I guess the goal is control. But even then it gets tiring because in addition to fighting the threat, your fighting yourself. Maybe limit your resources to doing the right thing?

We’re wired to get away from pain – which is great – but the issues of today are not like the issues of the beginning of human time. Back then, you saw a lion – you ran. Today, the lion is everywhere. You can’t just run the other way to escape it. So what do we do? We can’t evolve. The escape for the lion is far more complex than running – and isn’t instant. So we live in a constant state of FoF – which causes a lot of the feelings you described.

Fortunately, nature gave us an opposite of FoF – the relaxation response. Like I said at the beginning, I don’t know what the solution is – I’m just sharing my knowledge and experience so someone can combine theirs and find the solution.

All the best to all of you.